


ride on the MTA

by toastweasel



Category: Ghostbusters (2016)
Genre: F/F, also featuring patty and mentions of abby, negative personal space, the new york subway is hell but i also love it, this is basically straight fluff im not sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-14
Updated: 2016-08-14
Packaged: 2018-08-08 15:46:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7763707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toastweasel/pseuds/toastweasel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Erin Gilbert hates the subway from the second she moved to New York City—at least, until she meets Dr. Jillian Holtzmann. </p><p>Alternate summary: 3 times Holtzbert happened on the NYC subway at rush hour.</p>
            </blockquote>





	ride on the MTA

**Author's Note:**

> This is 100% based on my own experiences on the train two weeks ago when some guy and I had to get super into each other's personal space at rush hour, he jokingly said he felt like he should propose, and I told him he wasn't my type. I'm not sorry. Shout out to holtzmannd on tumblr for the headcanons on where the girls live; helped me plot this sucker out immensely. 
> 
> Enjoy!

Dr Erin Gilbert had made a grave mistake. She had stayed later on campus than usual, to hear a colleague give a most anticipated lecture on particle displacement. Although she had thoroughly enjoyed the lecture, once she began to descend the stairs of the 116th Street Columbia University subway stop she remembered why she always left immediately after she finished giving her 2 o’clock lecture.  The platform was a sea of humanity; it was the height of rush hour.

Erin did not like crowds; she never had. The crowd on the platform was oppressive and made her anxiety instantly spike. She took a deep breath and struggled to control it. It was either this, pay an exorbitant fee for a cab, or walk the nearly four miles to her apartment in today’s pair of very uncomfortable heels. The fear of an increasingly empty wallet and/or bleeding feet, for some strange reason, helped her quell the attack. Erin decided she could last the seven stops to Columbus Circle.

She had to wait for three trains to come and go before she could get close enough to the edge of the platform to get into the next train. Each train was just as packed as the last, so finally she screwed up the courage and slipped into the fourth train upon it’s arrival. She was immediately pressed against someone, and she grabbed the rail above her head, holding onto it and her briefcase for dear life.

The doors closed, the train lurched, and because of the physical forces she knew all too well, she lurched with it. Her palms, sweaty with the heat of the throng and her anxiety from the crowd, slipped on the rail and she tumbled forwards. Thankfully the train was so full that she did not fall, only pressed against the woman in front of her in a very embarrassingly intimate way.

“Woah, _hello_ there,” the woman said in tones laced with innuendo. Her blue eyes twinkling merrily behind yellow-tinted sunglasses as she removed an earbud.

Erin’s cheeks burned. “I’m so sorry.”

“No big,” she replied. “Although it seems we’re stuck like this.”

The crowd in the car had shifted, and now Erin and this woman were stuck in their newly formed intimate relationship with each other’s faces and chests. The physicist wanted the floor to open up and swallow her whole.

“Look on the bright side,” the woman continued, “I could think of worse ways to spend my commute than pressed against a beautiful woman.”

Erin flushed harder. “Oh my gosh, just stop talking, you’re making it worse.”

The woman laughed and winked flirtatiously. “Anything for you, doll.” Then she popped the earbud back in and Erin was left to stew. Every shift of the train would cause the two women to jostle into each other; Erin was intensely aware of their breasts pressing together. She wanted to die of embarrassment. Despite the six stops between 116th and Columbus Circle, the crowd did not let up, and Erin spent the entire subway ride wondering what she had done to make the Universe hate her so much.

And then, salvation. Her stop. She wormed her way to the doors and when they opened she flew out. As she headed for the stairs she could have sworn she heard the woman from the train call, “C’ya, gorgeous!”

She spent the entire walk from the subway to her apartment calming down and trying to ignore the dull ache between her legs that had come from being in such close proximity to such a handsome woman for such a long period of time. As soon as she got home she broke her routine and headed straight for the shower, determined to wash the encounter from the train off her body and out of her memory.

-/-

“Aw, hell, it’s sardine season,” Holtzmann said cheerfully as she, Erin, and Patty watched the outbound M Train pull into the Broadway-Lafayette Street station. They were going to visit Abby in Williamsburg; she had the flu and had nobody in New York but the Ghostbusters to check up on her.

Holtz was right; the trains were packed. The 4 train had not been bad, just a little busy, but the M train out of the city was packed.

“This is the only train for twenty minutes,” Patty said. “We’d better get on.”

Holtzmann grinned manically and pushed into the car as soon as it was acceptable to, dragging Erin along by the wrist. Erin followed, as did Patty. It was a tight fit, but they managed. Erin ended up clinging to Holtz, who was attached like a limpet to the nearest pole. They were once against pressed front to front on a very full subway car.

“Come here often?” Holtz asked her with a saucy wink.

Erin could feel the heat rising in her cheeks, suddenly remembering her encounter with Holtzmann on the 1 nearly a year earlier. It had been six months after that awful commute that Erin had encountered Holtz in Abby’s lab at the Institute. Erin had not recognized her immediately as being from the train; it _had_ been six months, and the encounter had been filed back somewhere in her brain as embarrassing, but not important.

Then, nearly two weeks after Abby introduced them, Erin remembered the train incident while lying in bed trying to go to sleep. After the memory surfaced the physicist had not been able to go to sleep until nearly four in the morning. Now that they worked together in the dining-room-turned-paranormal-research-lab, Erin found herself remembering the incident quite often; with Holtz’s daily blowtorch-induced antics and unrestricted flirting, it was hard not to.

Now it was clear, to Erin at least, that not only did she remember the incident but Holtz did, too. 

“You’re the worst,” she murmured petulantly, looking stubbornly at anywhere but Holtz’s face.

“Good to know,” Holtz replied, then shot Patty a grin over Erin’s shoulder and pointed at Erin exaggeratedly with her free hand. Erin, so confined in her own embarrassment, did not notice. Patty only rolled her eyes.

-/-

“Go to a Yankees game, you said. It will be fun, you said.”

“It was fun, was it not?” Holtz asked as they crowded into a train with approximately fifty other Yankees fans of varying levels of weight, height, dress, and intoxication. “Did you or did you not have the time of your life screaming yourself hoarse at Graham while drinking expensive ballpark beer and holding my hand?”

Erin grumbled and grabbed onto the overhead railing. Holtzmann, despite only being an inch or two shorter than Erin, was still short enough that should could not reach the rail. So she did the next best thing—Holtz wrapped her arms around Erin’s middle and nuzzled into her chest.

“Holtz!” the physicist exclaimed, red hot from the PDA. “Really?”

“Not like I can go anywhere else. Besides, we’re dating now, it’s a thing I can do.”

Erin was not sure she could argue with her. The car was packed and she really did not fancy getting separated from her girlfriend in such a crowd. Both of them were fully responsible women who could get back to the fire station themselves, but after having such a good afternoon Erin did not want it to go south for any reason. So she acquiesced to Holtzmann’s subway-induced snuggling, only protesting when halfway into their trip the engineer pressed a breathy kiss to the sensitive flesh behind her earlobe.

“Stop that,” she hissed, pinching Holtz’s hip to make her stop. Holtzmann pulled away from her neck and pouted. Erin relented somewhat. “Wait till we get home.”

Blue eyes lit up in anticipation.  “And then?”

“And then I will have miraculously gotten a headache from an afternoon in the sun and need to go lie down. You can make up your own excuse.”

Holtz’s grin could have out-shone a quasar. She nuzzled back into Erin and murmured huskily, “Oh, Dr. Gilbert, you know exactly what to say.”

**Author's Note:**

> I love comments and kudos. If you want to flail at me about Holtzbert or Ghostbusters, my tumblr is toastweasel. Cheers!


End file.
